Ever Fallen In Love? (With Someone you Shouldnt've)
by Storiesfromthebluebox
Summary: Vyvyan doesn't even ignore it so much as not think about it. Until his past catches up with him, and the truth comes along.


For Sara, because this story was her idea.

* * *

When Vyvyan was nine, his mother decided he was too aggressive and sent him to a boys summer camp on Brownsea Island. He never understood what she had hoped to achieve with this. Maybe she hoped he'd make some friends in a more conventional, peaceloving way than pushing other boys on the playground. Maybe she hoped the teachers would stop describing him as a 'disturbance factor'. She might even have hoped the many conversations about his behaviour at school would stop altogether. Most likely, she was just glad to be rid of him for two weeks. Whatever the case, she was unrelenting in her decision. She didn't bat an eyelid when he cried out: "But mum, I don't want to!" She carried him kicking and screaming after forcing open the bathroom door, which is where he'd locked himself in. He figured he would just hide in there and live off soap and water for a while.  
When she finally managed to put him in the car, of course he sulked all the way. The only act of rebellion his nine-year-old self had been able to think of was shoving a tic-tac up his right nostril. It was a quiet form of rebellion, because his mum only noticed when they arrived at the harbour and unfastened his seatbelt, but the irritation on her face was somewhat satisfying.

"Vyvyan, what have you got up your nose?"

"Nothing".

"Vyvyan, I don't care if you shove a bloody truck up your nose, you are getting on that boat. Whether you like it or not". She grabbed his arm and harshly yanked him out of the car.

"I'm so sorry", his mum smiled at someone of the camp staff, while dragging Vyvyan with her. "He's feeling a bit obstinate today. He put a piece of candy inside of his nose. A tic-tac. I have no idea how to get it out".

"We'll see what we can do about it", the camp leader, an older man, responded. "Lucas! Lucas, get over here for a moment!"

A much younger man who'd been standing with the other boys hurried towards them. He had close-cut dirty blonde hair and a black, sleeveless shirt with the 'Brownsea Boys Camp' logo on it. His arms looked surprisingly strong for his lanky posture, but it suited him, in a weird way.

"This young man has got a tic-tac up his nose", the older man, probably Lucas's superior, told him, pointing at Vyvyan. "Apparently he's a bit rebellious. Can you deal with it? I've got to start checking the names list". Vyvyan felt suddenly embarrassed as Lucas had smiled down at him.

"Don't feel much like doing this, do you?" he asked, squatting down to his height. Vyvyan just shook his head, feeling like he'd lost his tongue.

"It's gonna be all right. I'll tell you something". He tilted his head towards Vyvyan. "You won't have to deal with your mum for two whole weeks. It's going to be wicked". Lucas smiled, and Vyvyan couldn't help himself. He felt the corners of his mouth curl up and he grinned back. A minute later, he sat perfectly still as Lucas made him blow his nose in a tissue while pressing on his other nostril, and the tic-tac flopped out. His mum thanked Lucas, told Vyvyan to behave, and left.

In the end, the summer camp turned out to be not so bad. He missed playing with his best mate Gunner, who lived across the street from him, but it could have been worse. He liked having something to do every day, like playing soccer, rugby, and working with his hands. Most of all though, Vyvyan liked Lucas. He liked his infectious laugh, and the way he could make everyone else laugh. When Lucas was around, he tried just a little harder in the activities. Whenever Lucas complimented him, he felt himself glowing with pride.  
He thought Lucas must really like him, too, because he got compliments a lot. One afternoon, after a game of tug-of-war, Lucas wrapped an arm around Vyvyan, ruffled through his hair and told him he'd done well. Vyvyan's cheeks felt so hot, he was afraid they would light up.

"Oi, Vyv. Do you fancy Lucas?" One of the other boys asked him later that afternoon, when they were walking back to the tents for dinner. It was one of the rich, cocky boys with their neat haircuts. Vyvyan usually got along with them well enough. He may not be rich or have a neat haircut, but he made up for all of that in cockiness.

"No, _God_! Why would you bloody ask that?"

"I've seen you looking at him. I saw you blushing when he wrapped his arm around you".

"I wasn't blushing, you prick! I was hot".

"My mum says I should stay away from queers", the other boy said sternly, and he ran away before Vyvyan had the chance to respond.

He noticed the whispers and stares during dinner. The other boys laughing. Afterwards, when they got in line to hand in their plates, someone pushed him in his back. Vyvyan almost tripped and dropped his plate. When he turned around, one of the cocky boys was grinning at him. "Hey, poof", he said. "Shouldn't you be saying hi to Lucas?" He followed it by pouting his lips and making a mocking kissing sound.

That was it.

Calmly, Vyvyan set down his plate, knocked him down and started beating the living daylights out of him. Under loud encouragement of the rest of the group, there was a lot of rolling, punching, biting, clothes tearing, hair pulling and spitting –Vyvyan had managed to spit right in the other boy's eye, which is still one of his proudest achievements- until Lucas finally pulled them apart. His face was black and blue, his lip was slightly torn and they were both disqualified from the activities for a whole day, but no one called him a poof anymore since.

In the summer of 78', Vyvyan and his neighbour friend Gunner discovered a common passion in video games. When Vyvyan thought of the video games back then now, he thought they were laughable, but they'd been amusing enough when he was sixteen. He and Gunner would spend all their pocket money to buy new games when they came out. Whenever they found a new game they really liked, they spent days on end in Vyvyan's basement, not bothering to wash themselves, the same L.P –The Sex Pistols' _Never Mind the Bollocks_ \- playing on repeat. Gunner only left for dinner sleep, or when Vyvyan's mum complained they had played enough video games for the day or had to take a shower. Vyvyan's mum said it wasn't healthy for two boys their age to spend that much time together in a basement.

"You should go out and meet birds", his mum would argue.

"I go out every week!", Vyvyan had said in his defence, one morning during breakfast. "You complained about me being coming home too late this Thursday".

"Well, yes, that's true", his mum admitted somewhat reluctantly. "But whenever Gunner turns up at our doorstep with a new video game, it's like the rest of the world can drop dead for all you care. I just don't get it. If I didn't know better I'd think you were doing more down there than just gaming".

He'd almost choked on his cornflakes. "GOD, mum. What exactly do you think 'gaming' is all about? Lying around and feeling each other's bottoms? Playing with each other's joystick?"

She'd given him her Face of Disapproval. "Tone down the sarcasm, young man. It doesn't suit you".

She was right about the girl part, though, and he knew it. He was sixteen, and he had never even kissed a bird. The closest he'd gotten was trying to get off on the posters in the basement, and even that hadn't worked out entirely.

He didn't know if this should be bothering him. Surely there was nothing different about him compared to his mates. He liked all the same stuff they did. He liked the same bands, he wore the same clothes, (oversized leather jackets and cheap jeans that he tore holes in with the peeling knife from the kitchen drawer to make himself look edgy) and liked doing the same stuff. Even if it meant getting into trouble.

Their favourite thing to do was stealing liquor from liquor stores and get pissed. Sometimes at somebody's house, sometimes in back alleys when they had no other place to go. Occasionally this was followed up by minor acts of vandalism. Just after his sixteenth birthday, he was arrested for smashing a window, breaking in and stealing a six-pack of beer from the refrigerator. He'd only done it for a bet, but the pig that handcuffed him had just answered: "Not my problem, matey". He'd tried spitting, which was sort of his special skill, but he'd been unsuccessful. _Damn. Bad angle,_ he'd thought to himself.  
They'd tried calling his mum, but it had been the middle of the night and she always switched the phone off in case one of her string of ex-lovers decided to stalk her. His back had been hurting from the stiff jail bed when she'd come to pick him up the next morning.

It hadn't been his first encounter with the pigs, but his mum didn't need to know about that. The point was: he wasn't any different from his friends. There was nothing abnormal about him. It was just a matter of waiting for the right bird to come along. Not that he would ever tell anyone he had never kissed before. Especially not Gunner. Gunner,Vyvyan imagined -with his artificially-tousled hair and nonchalant I-don't-give-a-damn style- probably had loads of birds to choose from.

The truth was, he liked hanging with Gunner a lot more than going out with any of his other mates. And not just because he always shared his cigarettes with him – although that was how they'd become friends. Gunner had been smoking since he was twelve, and his slightly oversized buttoned shirts always smelled of Lucky Strikes. He bought them for a really cheap price from some dodgy street seller that always hung around The Kebab and Calculator, one of their favourite pubs. Judging from the prints, they came from an Eastern-European country, but it was just as well.

That game they had been hooked on that summer was _Space Wars_ : a game where they had to fight each other on space ships. Their afternoons were filled with smoking Eastern-European Lucky Strikes, playing games and listening to punk records. One evening, when Vyvyan's mum was away, Gunner had showed up with a bottle of expensive red wine and a new L.P: _Pink Flag_ by _Wire._

"Sorry I didn't bring any beer", Gunner explained when he came in. "But I stole this from my mum".

"Cool", Vyvyan said, a grin spreading on his face. "Let's open it".

"Yeah, wait, let me just put this record on", Gunner said, holding up the Wire record. "I found this in the record store yesterday. You'll love this".

Vyvyan lit up a cigarette as the guitars filled the room, soon to be followed by the raw voice of the singer. The wine tasted sour on his tongue, and he actually thought it was disgusting, but he liked how quickly it took effect. By the time they'd finished most of the bottle, they had played two rounds of _Space Wars_ : both of which Vyvyan had lost. He blamed it on that bloody wine, it was seriously messing with his reactive skills.

Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the music, or the combination of it all, but Vyvyan felt suddenly hyperaware of Gunner's arms so close to his own. The way his elbow looked below his rolled up sleeves, the flexing muscles beneath the skin of his hands as he played. It was quite… _pretty_. Bloody hell, he was hammered. He'd never use a girly word like that sober, not even in his own mind.

Then all of a sudden, Gunner wasn't playing anymore. The controller was beside him on the couch, and he was looking at Vyvyan with an expression he was either too drunk or too high on adrenaline to make out. They did it within the blink of an eye, so neither really had the time to reconsider. Vyvyan's hand was on the collar of his shirt, clenching in a fist, then his other hand was _under_ his shirt, feeling his skin, and their mouths were on each other in an almost effortless motion. As the _Wire_ singer was going on about _this_ _feeling called love,_ they snogged like the zombie apocalypse had just broken out (one of Vyvyan's favourite hypothetical scenario's) and they weren't sure if they'd live to see the next day.

The details were hazy, but he remembered the way his heart had been racing with such extreme speed he was afraid it wouldn't hold. He remembered the sharp taste in Gunner's mouth and the way their hands had been everywhere until he couldn't tell anymore which belonged to who. He remembered his whole body being in ecstasy. He remembered being breathless.

And then he remembered waking up. Gunner was lying next to him, his naked bottom pressed up against him. As he looked down, he noticed that he wasn't wearing any pants either. _Bloody hell_ , Vyvyan thought, his head throbbing.

Both of them had probably pieced together the gist of what had happened, but they didn't waste any words on it other than Vyvyan saying: "Look. Last night was all well and good, but let me make myself perfectly clear: I'm not a poof. And if you tell anyone what happened, I won't be held available for the consequences". He said it jokingly, but they both understood how things were. Gunner huffed out a laugh and agreed.

The summer after that, Gunner moved to go to college, while Vyvyan failed and had to redo the year. Apart from the postcards Gunner would occasionally send him and the one time he'd phoned him out of the blue to tell him he was coming back for a few days, after which they'd hung out in the Kebab, they lost touch. The postcards gradually became shorter, because Vyvyan had stopped answering. He usually set fire to them.

When he turned eighteen and enrolled in Scumbag College, Vyvyan thought he should get on with it and chatted up a punk rock girl at a party. When they kissed, it was shockingly tame and sweet compared to the wine flavoured eruption he'd had with Gunner. Maybe if Vyvyan didn't have such a massive disdain for anything that was tame and sweet, he could have stuck it out with her. Maybe he could have made himself believe he really liked her in _that_ way.

He really tried, but it kept on happening. Or rather, it kept _not_ happening. Every time they got past fumbling beneath each other's clothes, he panicked and froze. He kept stammering excuses to leave, or find smart ways to change the subject.  
After a few months, however, she started to get impatient. Then, finally, Vyvyan felt obliged to give her the 'it's not you, it's me' speech and left her in a dingy roadside diner. A guy his age across the street winked at him.

After this whole experience, he decided to give up on birds for a while. Dating was a very boring concept anyway, he sometimes thought as he smoked cigarette after cigarette in his basement. Camel 99 - the cheapest alternative to Lucky Strikes he could find.

-  
There was a Martin Luther King quote scribbled on one of the walls of Scumbag College, with black graffiti. It said: _"Let no man pull you so low as to hate him"._ Vyvyan thought it was obvious Martin Luther King had never met Rick. He'd hated that skinny-bottomed bum face from the very first day he'd laid eyes on him.

The four of them had gotten together by chance, of course. At the end of his first year of college, Vyvyan decided it was time for him to move out after the summer. When having a look at the advertisements in the hallway one afternoon, his eye had wandered to a yellowed piece of paper with a picture of a ramshackle house on it. Underneath, it read:

"WANT A ROOF UNDER YER YEAD? CALL THE  
 _YURI GAGARIN SIEGE OF STALINGRAD GLORIOUS FIVE YEAR PLAN SPUTNIK TRACTOR MOSCOW DYNAMO BACK FOUR BALOWSKI_  
FAMILY AT THIS NUMBER'.

It had peaked his interest. Not only would this house save him a lot of money, he figured, but it would significantly increase his chances of getting a place to stay. It looked so shabby most normal students wouldn't be interested in it.  
Vyvyan was used to living in a toilet anyway, so he'd called the number from the first phone cell he encountered on the way home. The landlord, Jerzei Balowksi, had sounded like he'd expected: like a drunken moron. But maybe that would actually be a benefit. He needed to nick someone's liquor now that his mum wouldn't be around.

He bought a hamster, dropped his most important possessions in a bag and went to the new house equipped with only those things. Apart from a few black punk and metal t-shirts, he hadn't bothered taking any clothes. There were already two other boys standing in the front garden when he got there, talking to the landlord. Or, _talking_ wasn't the right word. One of them, a skinny one with pigtails, was practically shouting.

"I can't sleep in the same house as this bloody hippie!" he said in a loud and demanding voice, pointing at the other boy – a bored looking hippie with long greasy hair. "Do you want me to die of some filthy hippie disease in my first week of college? I have a golden _futuwe_ , you know. You better do something about it or my _pawents_ will hear about this".

Vyvyan didn't know what angered him more: the fact that this kid obviously was a spoiled bastard, or the speech impediment that was already getting on his nerves.

"All right, all right, let's not make this any heavier than it needs to be", the hippie said, in a maddeningly dull voice. "I've already been hassled enough today".

"Ah, there's yer other housemate", Mr Balowski said, when he spotted Vyvyan. He approached him and said loudly: "Hello little boy, or as they say in Russia: _Zdravstvuj_ – not that I've ever been there because I'm English lad y'know what I mean?"

He'd spoken literally one sentence, and already Vyvyan wished he would shut up.

"Anyway I'm Jerzei Balowski, yer Landlord, what's your name?"

"VYVYAN", Vyvyan said loud and clear, because he suspected this man may either be completely bonkers or deaf – or both.

"Vyvyan?" Pigtail Boy said, snorting. "Isn't that a girl's name?"

"Oi!" Vyvyan snapped at him, giving him a look that said: _I'm warning you_. Then he turned back to Mr Balowksi. "Right, can we have the key of the house then?"

Mr Balowski opened his mouth, but the greasy haired hippie, who was standing with his arms folded, answered instead. "No. He says he wants to wait until we're all here". He said it in an extremely whiney tone.

"Are you always such a killjoy, hippie?" Pigtail Boy asked.

"My name's Neil, actually, but don't bother remembering it, because no one ever does".

Vyvyan was just lighting a cigarette when Pigtail Boy suddenly decided to introduce himself. "My name's _Wick_ , by the way". He smiled and held out his hand.

 _Rhymes with prick_ , Vyvyan thought to himself, and he grinned as he shook the boy's hand.

"I'm sure we'll get along fabulously", Rick said, his smile widening. Vyvyan fiercely hoped the last person to join their group would be less of an insufferable twat than these two.

The bloke that came strolling around the block five minutes later was clearly a few years older than the rest of them, and Vyvyan was immediately impressed with him. Even though he looked nothing like Gunner, they shared the same vibe of effortless coolness. But this guy's coolness was more suave, more sophisticated.

Mr Balowksi stepped towards him. "Good afternoon my short friend, or as they say in Russia-"

"LOOK. Just give us the BLOODY key!" Vyvyan interrupted him. He was past trying to be polite. And so Mr Balowski finally handed Vyvyan the key and stumbled out of the garden, humming to himself.

"Well, at least we got rid of that bogey bum", Vyvyan said.

"Couldn't you have gotten here earlier?" Neil asked the Cool Bloke. "We've been waiting for half an hour".

"Mike the cool Person never shows up on time, and if he does, he's probably somewhere else", the bloke, named Mike, commented.

They were all too tired to argue.

Vyvyan never expected any of it to last. He expected to be out of there in maybe half a year until he found something better. But that wasn't what happened. When their first house got knocked down, they moved into a new house together. By that time, he already felt like the others were the dysfunctional family members he never had. He figured that he may hate Rick and Neil, but living with them was less boring than living on his own. And you never knew what jokers he may end up with if he tried to find new housemates.

Rick, obviously, was the one he got into the most fights with. They fought about comic books, TV channels, rooms, setting fire to each other's stuff, (one of Vyvyan's favourite things) even politics. Whatever it was that little git said, Vyvyan disagreed.

It was easy to explain why he exactly was so repulsed by him. Pretty much everyone he knew agreed Rick was a complete bastard. It was just as much of a fact as the fact that his hair was red.

Whenever Vyvyan wasn't messing with Rick, he tried to block him out of his field of vision and pretend he wasn't there. He succeeded sometimes. Most of the time, however, it was a stretch to ignore his loud voice and general annoying presence. Especially since he didn't get much sleep because he was out with his mates every night. He started to do this more and more lately, seeing less of his housemates. Vyvyan was fine with that, he needed the distraction. It was that God awful feeling inside of him, that feeling that he wanted to escape something, that he couldn't be within the same four walls for too long, or he'd lose his mind. Maybe that was the real reason for his drinking. He didn't know, and he didn't care.

"You know it's completely iwwesponsible to dwink that much, don't you Vyvyan?" he asked him one morning, when Vyvyan had stumbled in with a hangover.

"And what do you care?" Vyvyan asked, plopping down on the couch and lighting up a cigarette.

"Ah, uhm. I don't."

"Well shut up then".

Maybe he never would have acknowledged the gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach, the nagging little voice in the back of his head, if not for Vyvyan setting fire to Rick's diary. He'd done it to tease him, of course, and it had worked. It had worked so well in fact, that Rick had thrown his Walkman out of the window as revenge, which led to Vyvyan stealing Rick's homework, which eventually led to Rick finding the postcard. Typically, Rick waited with annoying him until he had the worst hangover

"Morning Vyvyan!" He said, when Vyvyan came downstairs.

"Piss off".

"Want to guess what I found in your _bedwoom_ this morning?".

Vyvyan sat down and reached for the cornflakes. "No".

"You see, Vyvyan, I was just wondering if there's anything you'd like to tell us? Something about a person named… _Gunner_?"  
In a dramatic gesture, he pulled out a postcard from behind his back and held it right in front of Vyvyan. Heat and cold took hold of his body at the same time: the heat went into his cheeks, and the cold froze him on the inside out, like in one of those accelerated clips in documentaries.

It was the first postcard Gunner had ever sent him. The one that said: 'call me if you want it too' and 'I think about you all the time'. He thought he'd burned that one as well, but there it was, right in Rick's hand. Vyvyan tried to snatch it away from him, but Rick was quicker.

"Give that here", Vyvyan commanded, holding up his hand.

"No, Vyvyan, I'm _not_ , I'm keeping it until you…".

Vyvyan quickly grabbed a peeling knife from the nearest kitchen drawer. "GIVE ME THAT BLOODY POSTCARD OR I'LL USE THIS".

"NO! I'm not giving it until you start being honest with me, young man".

"What d'you mean?"

Rick pointed at the card. "Is this why you're always 'going out with your mates'? Hm? To let them touch your bottom? That's it, isn't it, Vyvyan? You like _men_ , don't you!?" He looked very pleased with himself.

It wasn't often that Vyvyan was lost for words. But hearing it like that, hearing those words in the same sentence as his name, like it was a _possibility_ , released something inside of him. And suddenly he didn't know if he felt like fighting anymore.

"I… I…"

Rick's mouth fell open. "MIKE, NEIL!" He started yelling. "I JUST FOUND OUT THAT VYVYAN'S G.. WRAAH".

This time, Vyvyan was quicker. In a swift series of movements, he grabbed the postcard, clasped Rick's arms with his right arm, covered his mouth with his left hand and held up the knife to his neck. The other boy struggled, but it was useless, of course. Vyvyan was stronger, and his lifelong history of getting into fights had taught him a few tricks.

"Rick, if you tell Mike and Neil, I will kill you", he said in his ear. "You breathe so much as one word, and I'll kill you. Have I made myself clear?"

Rick nodded, and Vyvyan released his grip. As they stepped away from each other and Vyvyan dropped the knife, the back of his hand stroke briefly against Rick's. A short quiver went all the way from his arm through his neck. And for maybe less than a second, Vyvyan's gaze wandered off to Rick's lips, before going back up to his eyes. They both nodded, and he tried to ignore the fact that he could feel Rick's breath on his mouth. Then, because he needed to think and because he didn't want to do the stupid thing for once, he turned around and stormed out of the front door. He didn't look back as it slammed shut behind him.


End file.
